


That's My Word Too

by ReelingReverie



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Angst, Coming Out, Constructive Criticism Welcome, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Gender Dysphoria, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary!Italy, Other, Reader-Insert, nonbinary reader
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:15:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29669211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReelingReverie/pseuds/ReelingReverie
Summary: After a particularly distressful day of dealing with your gender, you reveal to your partner, Italy, that you’re nonbinary… and Italy comes out to you in return.
Relationships: North Italy (Hetalia)/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	That's My Word Too

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to write a reader whose assigned gender at birth is unstated/irrelevant.

It’s dusk in Venice. Soft blue clouds stretch low over a sweet, apricot-orange sky that matches the warm glow emanating from most of the windows. You step over these gorgeous colors reflected in the canal’s waters as you disembark unsteadily from the water taxi. You pause to hand the gondolier the fare in foreign coin and tiredly shake your head as he attempts to count back your change, instead gesturing for him to keep it.

You stumble up the stairs to Feliciano’s apartment and fumble the key he gave you into the lock. There’s no reason for you to feel rushed, but you can’t wait to be inside to let your guard down. The stress of so many unbroken hours spent socializing only adds to the pain behind your eyes. The door swings open, and you kick your tight shoes off. You dump your other belongings on the sofa. You don’t bother hunting for the light switch, instead ambling through the dark towards the bedroom. Your eyesight doesn’t even have time to adjust to the dark before you hit the bed. A sigh escapes you as you flop face-first onto the cool, unmade sheets.

You expected to doze right off the moment you’d hit the bed; you reached ‘exhausted’ about an hour ago. But instead, you feel hot tears well up in your eyes against the downy pillow. You can’t do this; he’ll be coming back any minute-

But logic rarely keeps emotions at bay when they’re this strong. You fight the mess of blankets, hoping to hide in them, perhaps pretend to be asleep when he comes in. They’re a mess from this morning, and the memory somehow only makes you feel worse. Cuddling up against him, eating breakfast in bed. Every moment with Feliciano feels so right and _easy._

Couldn’t this conversation also possibly…? No, this conversation is never easy, not with anyone.

It’s never just… “Here’s who I am, this is what you can do to make me feel comfortable.”

It’s always educating the other person on every nuance of it and arguing the facts with them. No, sex and gender are not synonyms, gender isn’t how you dress or act, ‘they’ _can_ be used in the singular, and on and on. You’ve lost people’s respect, their friendship- you don’t even want to _begin_ to think about your family right now. It never ends. Either you keep your mouth shut and try to ignore it all, or come out what feels like every other day just to get an ounce of the respect that’s readily dealt to everyone else-

You lift your heavy head in frustration, unable to find the edge of even one blanket… when you see him already in the doorway.

He’s still dressed in his Friday night casual, with his tie loose at his neck.

Some may think he’s oblivious, but he’s perceptive about what counts: he knows immediately that you’re upset.

“Hey, I’m so sorry about not leaving with you, Heracles was showing me photos of his newest cat, and I didn’t want to be rude-“ He cuts himself short. “Do you want me here, or would you rather be alone?”

You sniff and try to rub some of the evidence off your face. “…Here, please.”

He smiles, clearly happier with this answer, and comes around the side of the bed. He grabs one of the heavier blankets that’s mostly slumped onto the floor and throws it over you. He slides in next to you.

“Wanna talk about it?”

You shake your head a bit and pull the blanket over it. He searches for your hand under the blankets and gives it a little squeeze when he finds it.

He lifts a corner of the blanket as if you can’t hear him through the fabric. “…Do you want me to talk and be distracting, or not talk at all?”

“…You could tell me about the cat.”

You can feel him bounce a bit, giddy to talk about… well, anything. He launches off, describing in detail the cat Heracles had adopted, then easily trailing off to talking about the Greek’s many other cats, then cats _he_ has had in the past, how he had one cat that loved meatballs, so he called it Polpetta… there it is. Some way or another, he’ll manage to work pasta into a conversation. You giggle from your cocoon.

He never truly runs out of things to talk about, but… he seems to reign himself in soon after that. Finally, he broaches the topic. “Just… to check, was it a bad idea to invite you out tonight? Or… was there something else I did wrong that I can fix?”

You snuggle a bit closer until you’re curled next to his thighs. “No, no. You’re great, you did nothing wrong. But yeah, I’m not always so great in super social settings.”

His body seems to relax at this explanation. His fingers have found their way into your hair, and he’s tracing lazy spirals across your scalp. He’s quiet for a couple minutes. You can’t help but feel like a small cat yourself, wanting to lean your head into his gentle touch.

“Did someone else… do something wrong?” His fingertips pause at your temple, waiting for your response.

You let out a shaky breath. “I mean- she didn’t know, so of course it’s fine-“

“No, no, _pasticcino mio._ It’s still wrong. What did she do?”

“It’s… I can’t just _say_ it. I have to explain- I have to-“ Your throat is closing up again, the words aren’t coming.

“Shhh, shhhh.” He pets your hair again, gentle, gentle.

You feel him shift as if reaching to get something on the nightstand.

Then there’s a rush of fresh air as he pulls the blanket from your face. You roll over to look up at him again. He’s holding a pad of the hotel’s stationary and an ink pen on his lap for you.

“If it’s hard… we don’t have to talk about it. This can always wait. But I’ll listen if you want to talk now.” He slips the pen into your hand. “Or… read what you write, I mean.”

After a moment’s consideration, you pull yourself from your fetal position to sit cross legged next to him. You accept the paper and start to write… before glancing up and commanding, “Don’t watch, it makes me nervous.”

He readily obliges, obediently and dramatically closing his eyes and covering them with his hands. But that doesn’t hide his smile.

You scribble out some sentences, cross some out. Rewrite. You scribble more aggressively. Then you rip that page out, crumple it up, and toss it off the bed. You glance up at him, and see he’s opened one eye at the sound of paper ripping and crumpling.

“No peaking.” You chastise, and he returns to his former position.

You write again, more this time. Then you add a drawing: several long, wavery attempts at straight lines, with a black dot at either end. You label each line something different, and label all the dots on one side Male, and all the dots on the other side Female.

“Okay, open.”

He opens them and takes the paper like it’s a Christmas present. …The thought makes something twitch in your heart, the idea that he would take your explanation as a gift- that he’d appreciate you being willing to tell him something so personal.

Minutes pass. The room has turned a cool blue by now. Thin moonlight sneaks in through the slats of the blinds. You reach over behind him and turn on the lamp. He glances up, surprised at the brightness.

“Bad for your eyes.”

He nods, grins, and keeps reading.

More time passes. You click-click-click the pen. Is he confused? Is he… angry? You wonder if your handwriting is legible. He speaks English so well, but could he have trouble reading it?

You catch him catching you staring.

“You drew an arrow to ask about the line when I’m done reading. What’s this line about?”

You take up the pen again.

“Okay, so… you have the way your body is, which is your sex.” You point at the first line, labeled such. “Most people are pretty strictly one or the other, but some people are born with characteristics of both, which is called intersex. And then you have what you feel in your head and heart and soul or whatever… and that’s your gender. And you have how you dress, which isn’t related to either, but like… can be ‘read’ as more one or the other. The same goes for your actions. Like how you talk and walk.”

“Mmhmm.” He nods along with your explanation. You choose to take this as a good sign.

“Now, a lot of people- maybe even most people- have all their dots in a row. Their body matches their heart, and how they dress and act also ‘match.’ Some people, though… they’re born with all their dots in a row, but their one for their body might be on the exact opposite side of the line. Does that make sense?”

“Yep.”

He’s not arguing, he seems genuinely interested, _you think he might even understand._ You’re afraid to look up into his eyes though. It’s… so much information and you don’t know how much he already knows.

“Now, that’s not true for a lot of people. Most people aren’t perfectly all in a row. Lots of transgender people have all their lines in a row but the body one. But it’s not like if you’re a little ‘off the mark’ in any of the other spots you’re not cis. Like some cisgender women- you remember that word up here?” You point at the word you defined up above. “Some cis women may dress more masculinely. Because that’s what they like. It makes them feel more comfortable and happier. And some people are born sort of with a body more in the middle of the line- that’s called being intersex. And some people might not like this metaphor of the line, like they’d look at it and say, “well, I don’t think I’m just a dot on the line, I think I’m a section of the line.” You circle a stretch of the line. “Or, they might say, ‘my dot moves on that line. One day its at one end, another its at the opposite.’ Another person might say, ‘nope, I’m not really in the middle or at either end, I’m somewhere off the whole line.”

You look at the mess you’ve made of the diagram. Dots everywhere. You feel like a person trying to explain some high-level math to a child, or rather… like a mad scientist explaining something nobody believes to be real.

“I get it.”

Those three words fit like a key in a lock somewhere deep in your chest.

“You do?”

He makes a tiny grabby motion with one hand, asking for the pen. “Yeah. I think… I think I’m right here, and here, and… usually here, but sometimes here.”

You blink. His… his dots aren’t in a line.

“I mean, I probably don’t get it all just yet. I don’t think there are words for this in Italian. Or, if there are, I’ve not heard them. It’s a very… gendered language, without many neutral words. Nobody has showed it to me like this before. Or talked about it at all. It’s not really something anyone ever talks about.”

"Yeah, that’s true. But… if you want, I can help you learn about it. There’s books, videos, websites, forums- all sorts of stuff.”

“I like the sound of that.” He clicks the pen a couple times, amber eyes still staring at the page. He circles one that you wrote a definition for: not feeling entirely male or female. “This word… nonbinary. I think that… that fits right. Is that your word too?”

“Yeah.” You feel the tears rising again, but this time it feels so wonderful. “Yeah, that’s my word too.”

One of your tears falls on the page, blurring the ink. It was already a mess, so you don’t mind. It always is a mess, even to the people who get it. But sometimes, all the stars or dots or whatever align, and you get it.

**Author's Note:**

> Translation Notes:  
> Polpetta - meatball.  
> Pasticcino mio - my [little] pastry; a common term of endearment.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Leave any comments, critique, questions etc. I love reading them and will always try to respond!


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